Context Based Problems And Exercises For Teaching Engineering Economy
- Conference
- Location
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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Publication Date
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June 22, 2008
- Start Date
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June 22, 2008
- End Date
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June 25, 2008
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Engineering Economy
- Page Count
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9
- Page Numbers
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13.331.1 - 13.331.9
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--4491
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/4491
- Download Count
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529
Paper Authors
Rajkamal Kesharwani Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Rajkamal Kesharwani is an MS student in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Virginia Tech. His interests include decision making in engineering design and design economics.
Xiaomeng Chang Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Xiaomeng Chang is a doctoral student in Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech with an expected graduation in May 2008. Her research and teaching interests are primarily focused in the areas of engineering design, integration and knowledge environments.
Janis Terpenny Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Janis Terpenny is an Associate Professor in Engineering Education and Mechanical Engineering, and an affiliate faculty of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. She is Director of the Center for e-Design, a multi-university NSF I/UCRC center. Her research focuses on methods and representation schemes for early design process and on engineering design education. She was previously an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts and worked at General Electric (GE), including the completion of a two-year management program. She is a member of ASEE, ASME, IIE, and Alpha Pi Mu and is the Design Economics area editor for The Engineering Economist.
william sullivan Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
William G. Sullivan is an emeritus professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is a two-time recipient of the Eugene L. Grant Award for the best paper in The Engineering Economist. His research interests include justification of advanced manufacturing technologies, the economic principles of engineering design, and activity-based costing applied to the design process. Dr. Sullivan serves as coeditor of the Robotics and CIM Journal (Elsevier, Ltd.) and is a fellow in the Institute of Industrial Engineers. He obtained his Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract
Context-Based Problems and Exercises for Teaching Engineering Economy
Introduction
Traditionally, methods of teaching engineering economy draw on resources such as textbooks1-5, websites6 and papers7. Often, engineering economy courses follow the ‘given this, find that’ style of exercises to introduce and reinforce basic concepts. Developing examples and exercises that are interesting, engaging, and provide context is a challenging problem for courses with students enrolled from a variety of majors. Yet, we know that without proper context to their discipline, students will not find relevance or understand why they should care to learn engineering economy. To students it may be just another course to check off the requirements list. Further, students from disciplines other than industrial engineering (IE) often learn engineering economy as part of another required course within their discipline. For example, mechanical engineers will be introduced to engineering economy concepts in an introductory or senior course in engineering design. For this situation, non-IE students typically do not purchase a textbook in engineering economy, but rely on instructor provided materials.
When students become seniors, we expect that they will remember, integrate, synthesize and assimilate topics that have been ‘poured into their heads’ over the prior 3-4 years as they take on a capstone design project. Faculty teaching capstone design may introduce or reinforce a variety of topics, such as engineering economy, that will support the design process and other learning objectives that have not been covered earlier in the curriculum. The review of topics in preparation for the FE exam may also be a priority in the senior year.
While there are a number of excellent textbooks1-5 on engineering economy, and authors make every effort to improve these textbooks over time with added examples and exercises and new ways of conveying concepts, these updates come every few years and do not provide a dynamic mechanism to continuously improve. Sharing example problems from a variety of disciplinary perspectives is limited and infrequent. Moreover, submitting suggested problems and improvements to the textbook to authors is limited compared to the size of the community. And again, there is a time delay from when suggestions are provided and when these might be included in a new edition. If student A reads the textbook but has better insight on the subject due to experience in the field, the student may be in a position to give some real life example where he found the application of the studied principles to be useful. One cannot add this example to the textbook directly. To avoid trouble of communication with the authors, student A is likely to never communicate improvements to the author. As a result of this, someone who could have benefited more by learning about A’s experience loses out on the opportunity. This lack of dynamic mechanism to continuously improve learning resources is the same for conventional websites, and other printed media such as journal and conference papers.
This paper proposes a material collection and usage method that can be used to learn or review engineering economy. A wiki framework provides the means to post instructional materials on
Kesharwani, R., & Chang, X., & Terpenny, J., & sullivan, W. (2008, June), Context Based Problems And Exercises For Teaching Engineering Economy Paper presented at 2008 Annual Conference & Exposition, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 10.18260/1-2--4491
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